The Year of Living Beeblebrox Begins Tomorrow

I turn 42 tomorrow.

I was talking to one of my best and oldest friends, a moderately demented woman named Sian, who has a tendency to do things "because they're there", about her own impending 42ness on 29th September, and we decided that instead of "turning 42", we'd think of it as "joining Team Beeblebrox". For those of you who've never read Douglas Adams's Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy books, firstly, I'd say what on Earth have you been doing all this time? Go away and read them now. And secondly, I'll translate "joining Team Beeblebrox" for you as essentially "looking for excitement and adventure and Really Wild Things".

"We should do 42 new things," said Sian. "Things we've never done before, but wanted to."
42, incidentally, is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything in Adams's books - hence the significance of turning it.

"OK," I agreed. "Let's make a list and see what we can get done." My list, if I can figure out how to work this blog-site, will appear constantly on the right hand side of the page, and I'll run this blog for a year - the Year of Living Beeblebrox.

I've tried to choose things that I think I stand a chance of genuinely achieving but which are things to cross off a bucket list. So there's nothing especially massive or outlandish here - for the most part, the only things required are time, money and a bit of effort on my part. I suppose, ultimately, the list, and this year, are an experiment in Making An Effort. I'm frequently "too busy" to do the things I genuinely want to do. So this is an experiment in still being busy, but taking time out to achieve some of the little pleasures I'd like to be able to say I've had, and be able to look back on.

What else do you need to know before the year kicks off? My name's Tony, I'm an editor with my own company, my wife's named Donna, though for reasons largely understood by her (and probably, I imagine, plenty of marketing people), she's known largely as d (yes, lower case, this is not a typo). After living in London for about (in my case) eight years, we moved back to the town in which I was born and raised, Merthyr Tydfil in the South Wales Valleys, at Christmas 2011, and are still largely enjoying the change of pace. I'm significantly overweight, which is why one of the things on my list is to lose at least three stone (that's 42 American pounds or...erm...some number of kilos), and my attempts to lose weight are actually chronicled more regularly - or at least were till recently, at the Disappearing Man blog - a link will be on the right hand side.

That's about it for now, I think. So why not come along for the year, and see what I manage to get done, what I don't, and what turns out to be entirely beyond my reach. Let's have a Year of Living Beeblebrox, and see if it's fun!

Oh, should have said: At the moment, I only have 32 of my 42 things on the list. Am leaving some slots open for things that occur to me as the year progresses. Any suggestions gratefully received.